This American Life - 43: Faustian Bargains

Broadcast on: 22 Nov 1996

So Lillian Johnson was a teacher and she wrote a book about her job and she sold that book to Hollywood and before long her book was made into a movie called Dangerous Minds. Now it's also a TV show also called Dangerous Minds. And now every week Lillian Johnson can turn on the TV and see a teacher with her same name, march around and do things she thinks are unethical, inadvisable and sometimes just plain silly like holding a school fundraiser in a strip club. Number one there's no teacher I know who would do such a thing. It's illegal. I think he'd lose your job and I would hope he would lose your job but I just objected to that and I would never do it. Welcome to WB EZ Chicago. It's this American life and my reglass. Today on our program deals with the devil. As we do every week we've invited a variety of writers and performers on to the show with their stories. This week all stories about selling your soul, making Faustian bargains. In our program today Act 1 Dangerous Minds. Act 2. Act 2 is actually a found tape of Satan's own telemarketer. Act 3, Voyager. Act 4, Carmen becomes Faust. Act 5, first contact. Stay with us. Act 1. Dangerous Minds. First I'm a word about Lohan Johnson's book. The one that they adapted very freely into the movie and the TV show Dangerous Minds. It was called my Posse Don't Do Homework. Lohan Johnson taught in the public schools and she says that contrary to what you may see on the evening news it was not a war zone. That's one of the reasons I wrote that book is I felt like people are just writing off kids, you know, 13 or 14 years old saying well they're hopeless, they're useless and there's nothing we can do. All the things I was reading were about how horrible they are and they have no respect for people and they don't care and they're unteachable and I just don't feel that's true. I think that's really wrong. It's criminal.

Well Lohan Johnson's deal with a devil proceeded in several stages. First the film which started Michelle Pfeiffer came out I don't know two years ago I think three years ago and Lohan Johnson did like some things about the film. The primary lesson I always try to teach my students is you choose who you are. You can throw up your hands and blame everyone in the world and say I can't earn an A I can't do this I have to do that you don't have to do anything you don't have to come to school you choose to be here now you can choose to learn but you can choose to vegetate. I think that came across in the movie that you know there is hope that you're not a victim. Man you don't understand nothing I mean you don't come from where we live you you're not bust here. Do you have a choice to get on that bus? Man you come and live in my neighborhood for one week and then you tell me if you got a choice. There are a lot of people who live in your neighborhood who choose not to get on that bus the people who choose to get on that bus which are you are the people who are saying I will not carry myself down to die when I go to my grave my head will be high that is a choice. There are no victims in this classroom. But the movie took some liberties with Lauren Johnson's book. For instance the filmmakers made her mixed race class into an all minority class. The filmmakers invented fictional black parents who did not want their kids to learn. The filmmakers organized the film around two stories which did not happen in real life. In one when Johnson gets so overwhelmed by how impossible it is to make progress with her kids that after just a few months she decides to quit and in the other a student is shot and killed. And she feels that these things reinforce the very stereotypes that she was trying to dispel by writing her book in the first place. And I think the movie really promotes racial tension by by constantly pitting black against white

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